The German struggled but Blaine had tied him also to the posts
supporting the hollow chamber wherein pilot and observer sat, and now
springing in himself, he started off.

Right then the heads of a column of cavalry debouched in the field.
The roar of roar of the Taube filled the air and in an instant they saw
what was happening. By this time Orris was well up in the air and
still spiraling higher. The Taube, with which Blaine was already
partly familiar through prior captured machines among the Allies, was
making its first upward curve, when a thought came to Blaine. A ruse!
The German lay still helpless, bound and gagged. Though struggling
with his bonds, his eyes were spitting anger.

In its case, with pulley attached, was a small flag of one of the
larger German aerial squadrons. Blaine plucked it forth, jerked the
pulley cord, and there unrolled before all eyes the Imperial eagle,
with certain other designs, all on a black background, and with a
death's head in white at each corner. It was two or three feet square,
and as it floated from one of the poles sustaining the biplanes, no one
in the clear morning light could mistake its meaning.

Blaine himself was not sure as to the flag. But it really was the one
used only by a certain squadron especially endorsed and. supported by
the Kaiser and the Royal House of Hohenzollern and of which the Crown
Prince was the special patron. By the time Blaine was above the
treetops, some twenty or thirty horsemen had debouched into the sheep
pasture where these happenings took place. They were lancers and,
mistaking the real nature of this maneuver, every lance was depressed
in salute and a horse shout rose up that sounded much like a series of
Hochs with Kaiser at the end.